Here you won't find the pages of a pedantic journal, praises to fantastic places or accounts of memorable encounters. This is a collection of stories, thoughts, images, and most of all odd stuff, even though to someone else it might actually look ordinary. To discern its bizarre side, in fact, special filters are needed: cynicism, fussiness, stubbornness, isolation, impudence, nosiness and nerdiness. All flaws that, in different measure, this semi-nomadic being has got embedded in his genes.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Semi-nomad - Bangkok, Thailand

Tibetan nomad, by falsalama (CC)

After renting it for two years I've left my apartment and got back to the semi-nomadic kind of life that I had embarked on ten years ago. I left the few home appliances that I possess at a friend's place, I packed my books, records and some objects I am fond of and shipped them to Italy, I sorted a few cloths, underwear and accessories that would fill two backpacks - a large one and a small one - I got rid of the remainder and went back to my old, rather random sequence of rooms in hotels, guest houses, places of friends', acquaintances' or almost unknown hosts and accommodation provided by some client - when I have a training course to teach, of course. I keep the clothes that I use for work in a separate bag, which I store in a private checkroom in between job contracts.Once again I'm released, unsteady element, perpetually migrating bird, creeper without grip, pre-agricultural humanoid, uncoupled wagon, drifting lifeboat.After having handed back the key and received my deposit I felt like when, two times in the past - actually two and a half (*) - I resigned from a permanent job, holding in my hand not a contract with another company but a ticket for a long trip instead. As if I had finally exhaled after having held my breath for a while, my chest finally relaxed and my heart floating into it, delicate and light, in complete freedom. Without knowing what to think when people were telling me that I had to be crazy and I was not feeling a thing about it.Of course the fact that I don't have a family counts a lot. If I had it I wouldn't be able to perform this kind of stage tricks, or pricks. But the world is full of other singles like me, choked by the concern of being left without a job, without stability, without prospects, frightened by the specter of precariousness, without even a wife or kids as a pretext. On the other hand it looks like I am after all this, rather unconsciously, without plans or strategies, not so much out of fun as of necessity. I haven't had a long term job for a long time, I often don't have a job at all, and the one I manage to make a living with might slip out of my hands at any time. I don't know what the prospect of a pension is. On top of that now I don't even have an address. Anyway the ones I've listed are my only symptoms, other than that I'm feeling good. What ailment do I suffer from?

(*) The half time refers to when I was in Singapore and was offered the extension of a contract that I had expressly asked to be a fixed-term one. I politely thanked and declined.

2 comments:

I'm sure everything will work out just fine for you Fabio;) As it always does! So you in the meantime just relax, read a book or two and enjoy the feelings of misdirection, being lost and uncertainty of the future.It's all part of the life of a Nomad ;)